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Mercy
Mercy

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What is your favorite IDE?

Happy Wednesday friends and family. Let's discuss your go-to IDEs. I've always been fond of Visual Studio Code (VS Code). It is easy to use and can accommodate many VS Code extensions.

Visual Studio Code combines the simplicity of a source code editor with powerful developer tooling, like IntelliSense code completion and debugging. Visual Studio Code supports macOS, Linux, and Windows - so you can hit the ground running, no matter the platform.

At its core, Visual Studio Code offers a fast and efficient source code editor, ideal for daily use. It supports hundreds of programming languages and enhances your productivity with features like syntax highlighting, bracket matching, auto-indentation, box selection, snippets, and more. Intuitive keyboard shortcuts, easy customization options, and community-contributed keyboard shortcut mappings allow you to navigate your code effortlessly.

Apart from VS Code, I am falling in love with Cursor. It has an AI that helps in debugging code.

Please share in the comments, and let's see your favorite IDE ⬇️.

Top comments (171)

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kurealnum profile image
Oscar • Edited

Neovim. Perfect for... really everything I do.

Edit: I also use it for my notes

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shishpt profile image
Shishir

Agreed, the speed of Neovim is a big reason I use it on the daily. The amount of time I can spend configuring plugins to my liking is the main reason I love using it.

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ahmedjaad profile image
Ahmed Jaad

Are you saying you enjoy spending time configuring plugins more than writing the code that actually earns your paychecks?

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shishpt profile image
Shishir • Edited

I didn't say that. I enjoy putting in time configuring plugins and learning new ones. But I don't let it interfere with my earning window.

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

I support you because it promotes learning instead of just having tasks done for you without understanding the process.

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ahmedjaad profile image
Ahmed Jaad

No, it promotes wasting time. What does a developer truly gain from spending days watching step-by-step videos on configuring five LSPs? What value does that add to their skills or productivity.

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

I'm afraid, I don't think so. If you are a developer who focuses on your own product, then you are wasting time. But if you do client work, you need to know how it's done. You might work for a company that needs a rebrand, meaning you will start from scratch. Just because you know how to use already configured plugins doesn't mean they will allow you to use them. You will do as they say, yet you do not have knowledge.
🤷‍♀️

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

It appears to be a time-saving IDE; I would love to try it for my small projects.

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

As far as I want to agree with you, 🫠I don't have experience using it.

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minkhantsaw profile image
Min Khant Saw

same brother i also used Neovim

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kiwiheretic profile image
kiwiheretic

Well I have a very niche reason. It works well with my budget wireless keyboard from China. It has an annoying trackpad that randomly moves the cursor to another location on screen which is just awful if it happens while typing. With neovims modal editing I can lock the keyboard down. It's so much part of muscle memory now that if I went to another ide I would be looking for vim key bindings.

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miketalbot profile image
Mike Talbot ⭐

WebStorm, with built in database viewing, database intellisense and great support for JSDoc related completion, coupled with a powerful debugger that just works on front and multi-process backend at the same time. Also, it's the navigation around a large code base that is the best reason to use this tool for me. Search anywhere - variable declaration, file name, component name, function name, class name - I can get around my code in milliseconds. I'm also not sure when I last actually typed a git command, the plugins for this are very powerful letting me review PRs and answer comments, check version histories and blame without leaving the context of my code.

I use Sublime when I want a plain text editor, and I do use VS Code from time to time as some of my colleagues use it and I need it to work well in the code base.

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krd8ssb profile image
Steven Brown • Edited

Same. WebStorm for many reasons but the primary one is the git merge conflict resolution interface. I work in repositories with hundreds of other developers so the merge conflicts are inevitable and can be large at times. Some of the guys on my team that use VScode ask me to do the merges for them, then push the update to remote. It saves everyone so much time. One of them recently adopted WebStorm and is loving it.

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pengeszikra profile image
Peter Vivo

Good to know: WebStorm have a good JSDoc solution.

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

It sounds like you have a great workflow set up with WebStorm! The integrated database tools and JSDoc support really do enhance productivity, especially when working with complex projects. The navigation features you mentioned are a huge time-saver, allowing you to quickly find what you need without interrupting your flow.

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gopikrishna19 profile image
Gopikrishna Sathyamurthy

I am a huge fan of jetbrains products, especially their git tooling. Specifically WebStorm, since I'm a JavaScript developer. And it's free now!

I use vscode as a quick text editor for a lot of things. I know it can be a really powerful editor if configured correctly, but I dislike the configuring part. I already waste enough time indulging my OCD 😅.

I have tried VS, eclipse, NB, and no, they are awkward to use.

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giles_webberley_2c4cc9f84 profile image
Giles Webberley

I'm far from being a pro (but trying to get back to it) and although I'm now a VS code user I did have some experience of Eclipse when I was learning a bit of openFrameworks as it was the best documented way to get started. Once I'd gained a bit of courage I moved those projects to VS code and I have gone on to use it for Unity development all the way through to studying React and working with it; I feel quite safe using it and am constantly learning how to use it properly :)

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

I have never tried any of these VS, eclipse, NB. Due to your experience with them, I am not going to try them. They are now a no for me.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I like vscode just fine but am feeling like it is a drain on my computer resources

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

Consider trying Cursor; it appears to be similar to VS Code. JetBrains (IntelliJ) seems to be a better option too

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programordie profile image
programORdie

It's a fork of vscode...

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bntstr profile image
Bntstr

Good thoughts

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

Thank you

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mikedevita profile image
Mike DeVita

thanks for the suggestion, I'm giving Cursor a whirl now.

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

You are welcome.

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vinayhegde1990 profile image
Vinay Hegde

Looks promising and they promote themselves as a VS Code fork as well. But their pricing may deter individual developers in India, where few would pay $20 USD (₹1700) per user per month for an IDE.

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brense profile image
Rense Bakker

All my team mates who use jetbrains constantly have issues with typescript, eslint and prettier support 🤷

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

I saw that too but I thought maybe it was because I was using the free community version.

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dontry profile image
Don

If you just want to do some small tasks, you can try Zed. It's blazing fast. Almost zero boot up time.

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plutonium239 profile image
plutonium239

Sublime is faster 🫡 (acc zed's benchmark itself lol)
Pretty much anything except vslowcode is great though.

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0x2e73 profile image
0x2e73

try vscodium, its a smaller version of vscode, better for ressources

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

OH first time to hear of this

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brense profile image
Rense Bakker

Vscode is really the only IDE I use nowadays... The ecosystem is just epic and I've never noticed it being slow or hogging resources. Infact one team mate made that argument in favor of webstorm and we compared resource usage... Webstorm used nearly double the cpu and memory in the same project 🤷

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traleeee profile image
Tra Le

VSCode is just an code editor, the Visual Studio is an IDE.

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brense profile image
Rense Bakker

VSCode is an integrated development environment (IDE)...

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traleeee profile image
Tra Le

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

code.visualstudio.com/docs/support...

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brense profile image
Rense Bakker

Yes? It's an IDE, where do you think that page says otherwise?

...and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs, such as Visual Studio IDE.

I think what you're trying to refer to is that it's missing a built-in compiler, however, that doesn't disqualify it from being an IDE by any definition 🤷

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

VS Code is always on top

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

I'm a vim (neovim these days) type of person. I have VSCodium installed because every now and then I get curious and it has a really good vim keybindings extension, including doing things like split windows, which is great.

VSCodium over VSCode though!

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russellbateman profile image
Russell Bateman

I live on Linux, started on UNIX back "in the day."

I was an Eclipse award-winning forum responder, especially in the help out beginniners space for many years (2005-2014). Then an employer forced me to IntelliJ IDEA. A couple of years later, I needed to do some Python and I tried out both PyDev and PyCharm. That's when I anteed up the dough to purchase JetBrains from then on. I admit that I do heavy editing outside my IDE using Vim because I've been a vi guy since about 1981. Vi is a text processor, not some namby pamby flashy editor. I also do git at the command line despite IDEA; I acknowledge my dinosaur nature.

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pengeszikra profile image
Peter Vivo

Currently I am a VSCode user mixed my workfow of vim / neovim also. But I really don't like either too much so I started to write a own markdown first editor currently pre-pre-pre-eraly-alpha stage, but at least capable to show some minor code colorize, image tag, embed code, run a small js function, designed to a quick works, plus I have a lot of other idea which I can try with it. Even implementing some vim shortkeys.
Single Stream project view .. where don't need to tab between files, just a big scroll down, can folding which is would like to skip. This idea is hard to solve in VSCode or vim for example.

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rapper-charmer profile image
Rapper

Here to represent for the Emacs diehards

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lengani profile image
Lengani Kaunda

Resistance is futile ... they will find us here ... mind machine meld

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amit1952 profile image
Amitava Das Gupta

VSCode. It's not perfect but does the job. It's autocompletion is usually on the spot. Second choice is neovim. It's pretty good too. In fact movements i. e jhkl keys and keybindings make it a fast code editor, but using it as an IDE is something I've never tried

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